At the heart of our research group activity is a biomaterials approach to sustainable nutrition and ingredients.
Dr David Gray and his team have developed methods to isolate/recover lipid-rich organelles from plant material as functional ingredients for food or feed. This area of work not only has potential impact (social/health/developing world, and commercial benefits), it is of fundamental scientific interest.
Oleosomes (oil bodies) act as an energy store when oilseeds germinate. Their microstructure is lost during conventional oil extraction using organic solvents or high pressure crushing. Intact oleosomes can be recovered from oilseeds; ex-vivo (removed/isolated from their cellular environment) oleosomes disperse in water to form stable emulsions. Dr. Gray's research group probes the physico-chemical nature of these micron-sized lipid droplets. For example, they carry oil rich in essential fatty acids and lipophilic micronutrients, and the natural amphiphilic coat that surrounds the oil protects it against oxidation. Dr. Gray and his research group are also interested in how we digest these natural lipid droplets compared with processed emulsions.
Chloroplasts are organelles, ubiquitous in the biosphere, which convert sunlight energy into chemical energy. Dr. Gray's group has demonstrated that most of the nutrients in green plant material are concentrated in the chloroplast: omega-3 fatty acids; β-carotene (pro-vitamin A); lutein; tocopherol (vitamin E); phylloquinone (vitamin k1); ascorbic acid (vitamin C); iron; and manganese. Waste/underutilised green biomass is therefore an untapped source of this cocktail of nutrients which can be 'extracted' by simply removing chloroplasts. Dr. Gray has developed a physical process to isolate/recover intact chloroplasts on a large scale. Such liberated and concentrated chloroplasts deliver more nutrients to the consumer than cell-bound chloroplasts since their digestion is not impeded by the cell wall. Dr. Gray is also investigating the role of chloroplast microstructure in the release of nutrients during digestion (bioaccessibility).
Who we work with
Sources of funding for this work include: BBSRC. EPSRC, Defra, Charitable Trusts, and Industry
Examples of external academic collaborators include: CNRS Marseille, France; University of Wageningen (Netherlands); University of Massachusetts (USA); Rothamsted Research International; University of York; University of Loughborough; Quadram Institute, Norwich; Kings College London; University of Manchester; University of Bath.
Contact us
You can read more about the team and our research, and get in touch with us via the email links on this page.
To find out more about how we work with business, please contact Mita Lad, Senior Executive in our Corporate Partnerships team - mita.lad@nottingham.ac.uk
Meet the Research Team
Dr David Gray
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David completed a PhD in plant lipid biochemistry at the University of Birmingham before joining the Nottingham team in 1993. He plays a key role in both teaching and research work at the University.
Dr Mohamed Gedi
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Dr Gedi completed his first degree in Agriculture majoring in Food Science and Technology at Sudan University of Science and Technology (SUSTECH), Khartoum. He then completed an MSc in Food Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang, Kulala lumpur, Malaysia.
Having obtained his PhD in Food Science in the summer of 2017, Dr.Gedi stayed at the University of Nottingham to work with food and drink SMEs around Nottingham and Derbyshire. Dr. Gedi is now a Research Fellow in the Division of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics at the, University, working on a project to map the route of Iron Uptake from Soil/Hydroponic Systems to Plants to Human Uptake (Bioavailability), whilst collaborating on several other projects with his colleagues.
Filippo Bramante
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Filippo is a fourth year DTP PhD student.His research is mainly focused on destabilising oil bodies (oleosomes) extracted from oilseed rape seeds, using physical methods. This could allow the production of food and pharmaceutical ingredients devoid of chemical contaminants.
Filippo has previously obtained an MRes in Food Science and Engineering at the University of Nottingham, where he characterised some of the material properties of chocolate relevant to texture perception.
Chao Chi
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Chao is a 3rd year PhD student working on the impact of material properties on the digestibility of chloroplast-rich fractions.
Chao’s PhD research isolates and recovers lipid-rich chloroplasts from spinach, and applies drying techniques and thermal processing to produce dried chloroplasts as functional food ingredients with enhanced shelf stability. She also investigates the role of food processing on chloroplast microstructure and the release of nutrients during digestion (bioaccessibility).
Ardeshir Farmanfarmaian
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Ardeshir (Ardi) Farmanfarmaian is an MPhil student in the University's Food, Nutrition & Dietetics and Plant Sciences Departments. His project involves growing spinach plants in perlite media in growing room conditions, coupled with tracing the flow of iron (Fe) from growth media to the human digestive system via the liberation of chloroplasts from spinach leaves. Ardi works in association with two postdoctoral students in Food, Nutrition & Dietetics.
Liuhang Ji
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Liuhang Ji is a PhD student at the University of Nottingham. He is working on a project to optimize oral lipid-based drug delivery systems for targeted drug disposition into the intestinal lymphatic system and brain.
Ruth Price
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Ruth has been looking at the functionality of food-grade emulsifiers in a chocolate model using rheology - and using surface tension measurements, fatty acid analysis (using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, GCMS), lipid analysis (using high-performance thin-layer chromatography, HPTLC), and general molecular structure (using nuclear magnetic resonance, NMR) to understand their molecular characteristics to propose alternatives from natural sources.
Poramat Sucharit
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Poramat Sucharit (Book) completed his undergraduate degree in Combined Chemical Biology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. With his growing interest in food nutrition and functional ingredients, he decided to pursue research into the application of the intracellular organelle, chloroplast.
Book began his PhD at the University of Nottingham in 2018 under the supervision of Dr. David Gray. His project investigates the surface-active properties of bulk chloroplastidial membrane materials (CMM) in water- and oil- continuous phase food models.
As he approaches the final stage of his PhD, he is exploring the differences in digestibility of this complex membrane materials with and without the presence of oil.